


Growing Pains

by lightbenderlin



Series: Stars Above, Oceans Below [2]
Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Brief appearance of OCs, Comfort, Drift Compatibility, Fluff, M/M, Pacific Rim AU, Post-Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27603275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightbenderlin/pseuds/lightbenderlin
Summary: Immediately following Light Up the DarkGalo and Lio are compatible, but when new things are gained, old things may be lost. It's both the best and worst thing that's ever happened to Galo that Lio understands which old things he can bear to lose.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Series: Stars Above, Oceans Below [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018048
Comments: 20
Kudos: 41





	1. Part 1

Coming out of the drift is somehow stranger than falling into it. Galo doesn't remember how he got to his room; or rather he remembers it in bits and pieces.

Coming offline from Detroit stealing his breath --

\--The entirety of the command deck wants to clap him on the shoulder and congratulate him, but the only touch he registers at all is Lio's hand gripped tightly in his. Ignis says something about Kray. Lio says something back and tugs him out of the crowd--

\--Aina helps him out of the drivesuit, then it's Lio taking the armored pieces off him, talking low and calm--

It's not even his room, Galo realizes now. He's collapsed on the floor of Lio's room, shaking and holding Lio. Adjusting to the lonely feeling of Lio's thoughts being locked in his own skull again, a mystery Galo can't unpuzzle. Lio strokes the backs of his fingers down Galo's shoulders and back. It takes another moment for Galo to realize he's talking, softly speaking that same calm mantra.

"Come on back, Galo. Come on... you did such a good job, don't lose it on me now."

Galo finds one of Lio's hands and squeezes. "Was more ready to go into the Drift than out of it," he mumbles. He can feel Lio shake in silent laughter.

"There's really no preparing for it. You think going back to the way your brain normally operates would be simple, but adjusting back is just as hard as adjusting to someone else in your head. It gets easier," Lio promises.

"I miss you." It sounds silly once it's spoken. Galo is sitting in Lio's room, in Lio's arms, with his head full of Lio's memories, and still he misses him. Lio squeezes his hand, and Galo knows he understands.

"I miss you, too." They sit in companionable silence while Galo tries to put order to the jumbled thoughts and memories in his head. Lio says, after a moment, "You making such a big deal about me not listening to my doctor makes so much sense now."

Galo grimaces. "I was really,  _ really _ stupid. Doc said it was a miracle I could do anything with it, since I kept aggravating the skin grafts and something something nerve damage." He had glazed over details then, and glazes over them now. "I don't really know. I just know it sucked for ten months and then I finally did as I was told and it got better."

"I'm glad," Lio tells him, smile soft where it's pressed against his shoulder. It's almost a kiss, the curl of Lio's lips over his shirt putting a contented curl of warmth in Galo's stomach.

"Can we talk?" Galo asks. "About the whole... not talking because I already know how you think thing?"

He feels Lio adjust behind him, drop his chin on Galo's shoulder. "Yeah, but can we move somewhere else? I've got a couch and a bed that are both more comfortable than the floor."

"How'd we end up here anyway?"

"You said something about jello knees and then just sat down and wouldn't move." That seems about right, Galo thinks, as he stands on legs that only kind of want to hold him up and tugs Lio after him to the boxy sofa against one, bare, sheet metal wall. It's only moderately more comfortable than the floor. Lio tucks his legs up underneath himself, and his weight puts a dent in the stiff cushions, a gravity well Galo wants to drift toward. He settles back against the arm of the sofa instead, and Lio asks, "So...?"

"So, I'm not a Ranger. And I'm not gonna screw you over for Detroit," he assures quickly, "but I'm not used to the thing where drift partners just kind of... don't talk because they drift and they  _ know _ and--"

"Galo," Lio says quietly. It's enough to interrupt the anxious tirade. He offers that soft smile again and continues, "I know you aren't going to quit this, and I kind of get that my knowing that is exactly the problem, but what did you  _ actually _ want to talk about?"

"Um... about how I know you're sorry for worrying me about your health, but I'd kind of like to hear it from you?" He starts, and picks at the peeling faux leather on the sofa arm.

"I'm sorry," Lio apologizes easily, quiet only for a moment before the words slip out. Galo turns to him, almost startled by an apology he asked for, to find Lio staring back, eyebrows pulled together anxiously. "I didn't mean to worry you. I didn't realize how important it was to you, then." Galo sighs with relief he didn't know he was missing, and he  _ knows _ the feelings are more complicated than his words can cover. He felt it from Lio in the drift--apology, and guilt that as genuine as he felt the regret, Lio would still do as much as his body would allow regardless of Heris's blessing or Galo's ire. He knows, in drift-given understanding, that Lio doesn't know how to be any other way. Lio leans into couch and his gravity tugs at Galo some more. "Anything else?" He asks, before Galo's traitor tongue could say  _ I know _ .

"Uh... did you want to ask anything?" Galo wants an exchange, not an interrogation. With his head still spinning in artificial vertigo, he needs a moment, needs the tide swell to recede, needs the back and forth. He knows Lio knows that, too.

"I, um,"  _ I already know your answers _ , is what Galo knows Lio is trying not to say. With his face twisted in the effort of coming up with  _ something, _ Galo's chest still swells with adoration, appreciation. Lio is trying so hard for him, and Galo knows he doesn't make it easy. Lio reaches out to brush cautious fingertips against the black cuff of Galo's single white sleeve. "Can I see this now?"

"Oh, sure." Galo remembers, as he unclips the buckle under his shirt, that Lio had been curious about it before. He remembers joking with Lio about secrets and dates and laughing chasing each other around the gym. He tugs the sleeve down his left arm and wonders why he didn't notice sooner the breadth of emotion Lio regarded him with. He is an idiot, he thinks, as he pulls the cloth from his body and offers his arm for his partner's inspection.

Through Galo's memory, Lio had seen the damage done. It doesn't stop him now from sucking a sympathetic breath through his teeth and curling his fingers in a phantom pain that never belonged to him. It passes before Galo can say anything and Lio reaches out again to touch. Shoulder to wrist, Galo's left arm is pockmarked in angry red-orange hues. The shocking color of the scars never faded, bright as tattoo ink but not nearly as artistic. "We were wearing leather gloves for work," Galo says absently, eyes locked on the places where Lio touches him. "Acid ate right through my shirt, but took longer on the glove. Good thing too-- I don't think I would have been able to use my hand again after that much damage."

Galo fails to not shiver when Lio takes his hand and traces fingertips delicately up his forearm from wrist to elbow and back. "You went through so much pain," Lio says. His left hand, holding Galo's, shakes. Galo knows in his heart that Lio's head is latched onto that memory of injury and pain. His explorative caress unconsciously morphs into the gentle massaging motions Galo uses with ointment when the weather turns or the scar tissue stiffens, picked up from Galo's subconscious along with the phantom pains. Galo doesn't know what to say to comfort Lio.

His head still feels contradictingly both full and empty, original thought replaced by the disorganized memories of another person trying to fit themselves in his subconscious. The things he wanted to talk about swim amid the detritus. Galo watches Lio's fingers play over the old scars on his arm and latches onto the first thing that surfaces. "Did I know you play piano?"

It draws a laugh out of Lio and breaks the somber mood. Galo wants to hear that sound forever. "I don't though," Lio says through his laughter. "Thyma did. I learned a little from her, probably. I spent, ah, something like five years in her head. You pick things up."

Galo knows. He's seen the way Remi and Varys have picked up each other's habits. Meis and Gueira are practically the same person. He wonders what quirk of Lio's he'll unconsciously adopt. Wonders what Lio will pick up from him.

"You miss her," Galo says, a statement of fact accompanied by an ache in his chest, borrowed from Lio, for a girl he's never met, and never will. Lio leans his cheek against the sofa and closes his eyes. His hands stop moving but don't let go.

"Yeah," he says, and it's awful how one word holds eight months of grief. Galo drifts into his orbit, reaches out to pull Lio's blazing sun to his chest and hold him because he knows, firsthand through their shared conscious, how much it hurt to lose Thyma and how much Lio wants to be held. Lio sniffs, the only hint of tears from him, and says into Galo's chest, "She's never far, though. I'm always going to bring her into the drift."

"I know." It's Galo's turn to hold tight to his partner with nothing but the silent reassurance of his presence. He draws his fingers through Lio's hair, traces down the knobs of his spine through his t-shirt. Almost silent. "Can we talk about this, too?" Galo asks after a few moments.

Lio laughs again. "Guess we better." He moves away and Galo wishes he hadn't said anything, because he wasn't ready to let go. Lio doesn't speak. Neither does Galo, and he thinks, now, he understands why so many drift partners fall into that habit of noncommunication. What is there to tell someone who already understands your soul in perfect clarity?

Galo starts to fidget with the tattered sofa again, self conscious in the manner of someone who started a conversation they can't continue. Lio seems unbothered by the silence; used to it or offering some much needed patience with him, Galo can't tell. "How did you..." Galo hesitates, pushes on because this answer wasn't part of any emotional communion and he can't stop thinking about it. "How did you know that last memory was yours?" He asks.

"I-- what?"

"The wrestling match," Galo clarifies. "That could have been either of ours, right? Why did you say it was yours?"

Lio presses his lips together, silently studying him. Galo thinks he's said the wrong thing, asked the wrong question. He's on the brink of apology when Lio says, "Galo, I want you to think very carefully about the end of wrestling match you remember." He pauses, allows Galo to think about it--finally managing to grab Lio by the arm, twist it behind his back, his forearm and weight brought drown across Lio's shoulders, a slow countdown until Lio slapped the mat in exhausted defeat: the first time the whole exercise Galo had managed to properly pin him down.

"...now I want you to think about what you saw in the drift."

It's like a spot the differences puzzle in his own brain. Galo frowns in concentrated effort. It was a  _ memory _ that had happened to both of them. Lio's insistence that there were differences to be found at all is baffling, but Galo will try, for Lio.

In the drift, he had seen Lio squirm out of his hold again. It must have been near the end of the exercise; they were both sweaty, red with exertion, just like he remembers. Lio makes a grab for him--just like he remembers--and Galo seizes Lio's arm instead, tipping him over until his back hits the mat and he's sprawled below Galo, pinned by his body from hip to chest, staring up with flushed cheeks and parted lips and--

"Oh." Galo feels his face go scarlet. He sees the discrepancy but understanding still eludes him, like catching a fish empty handed. "I... don't remember that happening."

"It didn't happen," Lio explains. Galo doesn't miss how his ears go red. "Well, some of it did. The rest is just... a fantasy."

"With me?"

"Who else?" Lio snaps, his irritation mostly feigned. He reaches out, moving closer, to cup Galo's face in one hand, and sighs. That gentle smile Galo is beginning to think is just for him is back, and Lio says, "I like you too, you great big idiot."

Galo pulls Lio in again, crushes him against his chest and doesn't say anything at all. He speaks three languages, and there aren't any words in his polyglot vocabulary to give name to the fluttering bird of a feeling in his chest. For the way it soars when Lio laughs again, face buried in his shoulder. For the phoenix ignition when Lio grabs his face, draws him closer and asks, "Do you want to know how it ended?"

For his desperate nod, already leaning in, and the taste of Lio's lips when they kiss.

\--

Galo wakes up some time later on Lio's couch. More precisely, he wakes up on top of Lio, who seems perfectly content to use him as a blanket. Galo shifts a little, and sighs when Lio slides his fingers through Galo's hair.

"How long was I asleep?" Galo asks.

"Dunno."

"Did you sleep at all?"

"Yeah, a bit. Can't see the clock from here though. No idea what time it is." Lio pulls one hand away from Galo to point vaguely to the wall behind his head. Galo sits up just a little, scrubs at his eyes and squints at the wall.

The walls are identical, mostly, except for the furniture pushed against them to make the most of the small space. Just the bare sheet metal walls of the Shatterdome, broken up by the puckered lines of slapdash welding. There's no personality to the room, he realizes with just a little horror. No collections of books or knickknacks on Lio's shelves. No photos or posters tacked to the ugly walls. Galo finds the clock easily in that empty expanse--23:42 glowing in steady red light.

He slumps back down onto Lio, complaining, "We missed dinner."

Lio ruffles his hair again. "You won't starve."

"Breakfast isn't for seven  _ hours, _ " he whines back, laughing.

"Alright, get off then." Lio shoves him a little.

"What?"

" _ Off _ ." Lio repeats, and pushes again. Galo scrambles off him. He steps into his boots, doing up buckles, snatching up a leather jacket draped carelessly over the end of his bed while Galo watches, silent and confused. Lio stops, hand on the door, and turns back to Galo. "Well, I'm not gonna let my partner starve. C'mon," he says.

Galo follows him out into near-silent corridors. "Where are we going?" Galo asks when Lio leads them not to the kitchen but to the garage. Galo's never had much need to go there: when he was a teenager and getting his drivers license, sure. But the Shatterdome's limited vehicles are signed out infrequently, and only by staff members heading into the city for supplies, business, and sometimes Kaiju Recovery. Everything else is delivered by truck or traveled to by helicopter, a necessary byproduct of needing all hands on deck in the event of Breach activity. Usually, if Galo is heading out somewhere, it's out into the ocean to help haul out a Jaeger post-battle.

Lio pulls a keyring from his pocket and strides confidently to a motorcycle Galo's never seen before, and tosses him a helmet. Galo tries very hard not to think, under the ugly, flickering fluorescent lights and the grimy concrete backdrop of the parking garage, that Lio straddling the bike and throwing a reckless grin his way is the sexiest thing he's ever seen. The engine rumbles to life as Lio answers, "Where do you think? Getting dinner in Hong Kong."

\---

Neither the late hour nor the Kaiju threat have done a thing to discourage Hong Kong's nightlife. The streets aren't quite as crowded as what the daytime markets see, and Galo knows a solid third of the crowd is looking for things they can't find during the daylight. Things that appear under the neon light with the right words and a handful of cash.

Lio weaves the bike expertly through the crowded street until they can't progress on wheels any further. Here, the smell of cooking oil is heavier in the air than the pollution. They pull off to the sidewalk, and Lio cuts the engine and tugs his helmet off. The lights catch in the disarrayed strands when he shakes his head, turning blonde hair into brilliant hues of red, pink, green, blue. Galo keeps hold of his waist when Lio dismounts the bike, when he twists to face him, when Lio grabs his chin and plants a short kiss on his mouth. "Stay with the bike?" He asks.

Galo nods, and maybe enjoys watching Lio, still in the tight drivesuit leggings, slip out of his grasp and disappear into the crowd. This once, Galo thinks he doesn't mind being left behind. The nap helped: the intense loss of Lio's mental presence has faded, and sleeping let his subconscious put away the disorganized jumble in his head. He's still a little frazzled, senses frayed like torn fabric and Galo thinks if he immersed himself fully in the streets of Hong Kong right now, it would be about as delightful as a bad trip on shady Kaiju crack.

The physical distance is a strange but mild discomfort; as needed as the mental distance outside the drift, but no less terrible to bear. Galo is content to wait for Lio here.

No one bothers him. A few people approach, some with propositions that he turns down, some with friendly hellos. He recognizes a few faces--a couple scavengers he's met at pick-up sites, when a Jaeger was too damaged to leave the scene after a fight. They don't offer him anything but a hand raised in recognition.

Some of the market goers are suppliers for the Shatterdome. He ends up in conversation with the girl who delivered the gyroscopes for Detroit months ago, who asks him first if he's secretly an off-duty drunk. Galo laughs it off and wonders just how bad he looks. "No, just tired," he tells her in fluid Cantonese. "My partner's getting us dinner since I slept through it."

"How sweet! Have you been together long?"

Galo watches her expression fall from impressed to outraged as he counts up on his fingers only to reveal, "About seven hours."

It's a generous approximation, given that the only partnership they've talked at all about is the one where they pilot a giant robot together and Galo knows she wasn't asking about Lio as his drift partner. Galo also knows, in the weird tickling way that is starting to become normal, that Lio wouldn't care that Galo didn't bother to correct her. His friend crosses her arms and pouts at him for tricking her, but her smile is quick to return while she wishes him luck. She chats with him a little longer, asking after the Jaeger he'd been repairing.

"Congratulations!" She wishes when he tells her he'll be piloting it. "Oh! Does this mean I won't see you around for mechanical deliveries anymore?"

"Like they could keep me out of the bay!" Galo exclaims. "We'll see each other around." That at least he is sure of. He waves goodbye to her as she joins a group of her friends for drinks, and keeps waving to Lio, who emerges from the crowd with his hands full of skewers.

"Who was that?" He asks, passing Galo three skewers of siu mai and turning back to watch the girls vanish among all the other market patrons.

Galo doesn't wait to eat, and exclaims around a mouthful of pastry and fish, "I have never loved street food more in my life." Lio has the grace not to answer that he took them out precisely because Galo loves it. He waits patiently for Galo to swallow and answer properly. "She's Jin Lian. She delivers parts for us from one of the factories--her family might own it?--and she's a damn good mechanic herself. Won't let me convince her to join up with the PPDC though."

"I don't blame her." Lio chuckles and takes a bit of his own food. "If I saw the state half the Jaegers come back in while delivering for their repairs? I'd stick to fixing cars and running deliveries too."

"Aw, where's the glory in that?" Galo pouts.

"And the mechanics get any of it to begin with?" Galo doesn't really need the reminder, teasingly as it's said. Jaegers come back torn apart by Kaiju, and the media only concerns itself with the engineers who built it and the pilots who fought in it and the Kaiju it killed. Lio takes his hand and squeezes. "Not everyone loves big robots as much as you and Lucia."

"They should," he responds instantly. Galo laughs when Lio does and squeezes back. "Yeah yeah," he says. " _ No one _ loves mech as much as Lucia. I bet she puts herself in charge of Detroit the moment I'm... reassigned..." Saying it feels real in a way nothing about it had been so far. He pulls two more siu mai off the skewer and into his mouth so he doesn't say anything more.

"Are you going to be okay with that?"

He is. He's not. He pulls his hand from Lio's to run it through his hair and even  _ that's  _ wrong, fingers sliding easily through blue strands instead of catching on gel and stiff spikes. "I mean, it's not like they're gonna  _ stop _ me from working on her when I can," Galo says instead.

Lio doesn't say anything for a moment. Then he takes Galo's hand again and squeezes tight. "Like hell they could stop you if they tried."

\----

Lio, Galo discovers, could fall asleep quite instantly. He lets Galo drag them to his own room, pull him fully clothed into bed, and falls asleep again on Galo's shoulder within minutes. Galo lies awake, surrounded by the familiar Kaiju posters and Jaeger schematics that plastered his walls, the PPDC action figures he was too sentimental to dispose of and the new but comforting presence of Lio, breathing slowly and evenly, curled up at his side. He wonders, sleepless and distracted, if they had ever made a figure of Detroit Flare and whether Lio would make fun of him if he bought one.

He looks at her schematics spread out across his messy desk and wonders if he could make one, as perfect as the real thing but a fraction of the size. He tries not to wonder if Kray will still let him work in the shop if he's meant to be a pilot now.

He's thinking about it anyway when the clock reads 05:56 and he finally drifts off.

  
  



	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One Drift doesn't hold all the answers. There is always more work to be done, always more to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was originally supposed to be up two weeks ago, but life had other ideas (including a snowstorm and so much OT at work). Thanks for your patience! 
> 
> Part three should be up in the first week or so of January.

Galo Thymos is dead.

This, at least, is the declaration his simulated vitals make at an alarming frequency when a simulated Kaiju crashes through the simulated hull of his simulated Jaeger.

Galo Thymos, very much alive, thinks he hates the simulator.

He growls in quiet frustration. These are only Cat  _ Ones _ , the things Jaeger teams clean up in a matter of minutes, and he's spent three days getting his virtual ass kicked by them. Galo reaches up toward the headset, where nodes create a solitary echo of the Drift in his head, buzzing with recorded news broadcasts, and map his movements for the program, but is met with Ignis's gentle reprimand, "Don't take those off until we shut down the sim, kid. It's not worth the headache." 

He drops his hands, drops to a squat, and blows out an irritated breath. He hates the damn simulator. But Galo waits until the robotic feminine voice confirms they've taken his brain offline to pull the headset off. The nodes make tiny suction pops as they pull free from his skull.

Galo tosses the headset aside and drops onto his back. The cold floor chills the sweat he's worked up fighting the simulator all morning, and he counts rivets on the ceiling to bring order to his mind. He really,  _ really _ hates the goddamn simulator. Most of all because it feels like he's let down half the Shatterdome every time he fails. 

Kray, who thought he was cut out for this enough to assign him to Detroit without so much as a minute of Ranger training. Lucia and the J-Tech team he's all but left behind to chase this assignment, who had cheered him on the moment he broke the news to them. Ignis and Aina and the LOCCENT crew, who believed in him enough to throw him blind into a Drift. And Lio… 

Lio most of all, for everything. 

Galo can feel the vibrations of someone's footsteps through the floor moments before Aina's face appears above him. He loses count of his rivets. She frowns at him with an expression somewhere between concern and disappointment that nevertheless leaves Galo feeling like he's managed to screw up monumentally. 

"You can't just run headfirst at a Kaiju and expect to survive it, Galo!" 

"It's a giant ocean monster, Aina," he tries, "what else am I supposed to do about it?" 

She grumbles inaudibly, a nonanswer to a question Galo wasn't really asking anyway. It is, after all, the point of the Jaeger teams to meet the Kaiju head on. That's why they tower like skyscrapers and take two people to drive, monuments of power and a bulwark against aliens from the depths.

"I just need some more practice," he says, and he actually believes it. It's just a small thing next to the boulder of doubt he's still carrying, but Galo knows he can do this,  _ will _ do this. He needs a lot of practice. Maybe a miracle, if those are still happening on Earth. 

Aina sighs. "Yeah, practice. I'll see if I can set you up with some footage of other fights. You need to learn some better maneuvers." It sounds like she wants to say more, but Aina keeps it to herself. 

Ignis's voice comes over the intercom to them. "Take a break, Galo. It's lunchtime."

His stomach growls as if on cue. Galo heaves himself to his feet and follows Aina to the mess hall. Hunger drives him there more than anything else; Galo doesn't want to tell the others that once again he has made no progress at all. He fills his tray and casts his eyes around the hall for familiar faces, and one familiar face in particular.

He finds Lio, sitting across a table from Lucia. Her curls bounce, as animated as the rest of her as she launches into discussion. Galo can't hear her across the distance and the din of the hall, but Lio leans in on his elbows and listens with the patient focus Galo is starting to realize he gives everything. Well--and Galo reconsiders, remembering Lio's standoffish indifference to Kray's reprimand for Drifting with Galo without permission--everything that he cares about. Galo wants that attention on him. 

He collapses next to Lio on the bench with a dramatic groan. 

'Next to' is, perhaps a stretch. Even seated, Galo is the taller of them, and he uses it to his advantage to drape himself over Lio, his chin on the crown of Lio's head. Lucia pauses in her technical diatribe, and from behind him Galo can hear Aina's long suffering sigh. 

Lio regards him with the patience of a saint. 

"So I hear you died again today," he says lightly.

"From  _ who? _ " Galo gasps. He shoots Aina an accusing look as she takes the seat on the other side of Lio.

"Don't look at me! We both just came from the sim room, you know," she snaps. 

Lio nudges Galo with his elbow. "From you, idiot. You'd be crowing about your victory otherwise." 

Galo pouts. "I died today, don't be mean." 

"Stop dying, then, and I won’t have to be mean." Lio leans on him, just enough to push Galo off and show him a teasing smile.

It morphs, almost immediately, into a frown as a deep voice contributes to the conversation. “Or stop _ trying _ , more like. Leave the Kaiju battling to the  _ real _ Rangers and just go back to fixing the giant robots.” Aina and Galo both jump to their feet. 

“No one asked you, Vulcan,” Aina sneers. 

“You think you know better than the Marshal?” Galo cries in the same moment. 

Vulcan Hastus, towering over both of them even while they stand, laughs derisively. “Oh, Kray has made it clear he doesn’t give a damn what I think,” he says. “But what I _know_ is that Lio Fotia couldn’t drift with any of my recruits who were ready to fight, only to drift with an untrained idiot mechanic. I just can’t decide whether Kray allowed it because he spoils _you_ or because he’s trying to run the Jaeger program into the ground with trash like _him_.”

Galo bristles. “Hey! Don’t you dare--!”

Lio grabs the front of his shirt without looking up and pulls. It does little to move Galo. “Sit down and eat before your food gets cold, Galo,” he says evenly. “Vulcan can go spit his vitriol to people who care to hear it.”

“But, Lio…”

“Listen to him, Galo,” Vulcan chides with mocking cruelty, “or don’t. He got his last partner killed; I wouldn’t blame you for failing to perform in the sim just to get out of it.” 

Galo doesn’t get a chance to respond. Lio uses his grip on Galo’s shirt to hurtle to his feet atop the bench and takes advantage of the height to stare down Vulcan. The population of the mess hall in their vicinity has fallen silent to witness the scene, and when Lio speaks, even his quiet display of anger is clearly audible. “You,” he spits, hands curled into fists and body trembling like a bristling cat, “don’t get to talk about Thyma as if you knew her. As if you have any idea what was going through her head when she died.”

“Let me guess,” Vulcan begins, “she blamed you for being hot headed and willful and a glory chaser, eh? For taking Detroit into deep water where Scourge had the advantage over you? A four armed, powerful swimmer like that! You walked right into your deaths. I’ll be honest, it’s a miracle Scourge didn’t survive to lay waste to Vancouver after a stunt like that--”

“Stop talking about her!” Lio yells. His voice echoes and the last of the mess hall occupants trying to carry on their own conversations wither into silence. “One more word and I  _ swear _ Vulcan we won’t need a goddamn fighting ring. I’ll wipe the commissary floor with you and then I’ll tie you to Detroit’s helm as Kaiju bait!” 

Vulcan is unbothered by Lio’s threat. He snorts and his eyes slide to Galo. “No use for bait on a grounded Jaeger,” he growls. He turns and walks away and calls over his shoulder, “Threaten me again when you and your  _ partner _ aren’t on the shortlist for a decommission, Lio Fotia. Maybe I’ll take it seriously.”

Lio doesn’t move until Vulcan has left the commissary, tension turning him to stone. Slowly, conversation begins again, first in hushed whispers then swelling to the normal cacophony of a large group of humans. At their table, Aina is the first to speak. “Why the hell does Kray even keep him around?” she asks in disgust. 

“To keep the disobedient shits like me in line,” Lio answers as he retakes his seat.    
  


“Well, he could stand to have a little respect for the dead,” she declares. “If all his recruits are that cold, no wonder you couldn’t spark a drift with them.” 

"Did he mean it, about decommissioning you?" Galo asks uncomfortably.

Lio shrugs. "I've been on the shortlist for weeks, Galo. You're the only reason I have a chance at staying an active pilot." His smile still doesn’t return.

“No way he meant it. His threats are lamer than yours,” Lucia pipes up from across the table. They all turn to look at her, and she shrugs. “Not that it isn’t a possibility, but why would the Marshal even consider decommissioning you two only three days after he promoted Galo to pilot?” She shrugs again to their silence. “Vulcan’s full of hot air.” 

Lucia pauses, considering. “Say, Lio, do you think putting bait on a Jaeger would actually work to attract the Kaiju?”

\---

Lio follows Galo out of the commissary later. The silence is pensive, but not oppressive, and lasts two hallways toward the sim room before Lio slips his hand into Galo's and breaks it. "Take a break from the simulator for a while."

"I'm not going to get any better without a chance to test myself," Galo replies, an echo of what he told Aina before lunch. Lio tugs his hand, pulling him to a stop.

"You look like you're being escorted to your execution," Lio says bluntly. Galo winces. He thought it wasn't so obvious. "Take a break," he insists. "Watch some fight recordings, read up on strategy. Ask Heris for a crash course in Kaiju anatomy if you want to lose an entire afternoon." Galo cracks a smile. They both know he doesn't have the patience for it. "Literally anything else besides throwing yourself at programmed Kaiju fights before you're ready for them."

"But I'm--"

"You're not." Lio gives Galo no room to dissent. "Rangers normally go through months of rigorous training, both physically and mentally. Physically, you're in perfect shape, there's no argument for that. But you need to catch up on the tactical training the rest of us got in Jaeger boot camp." 

"Can't we just drift and I'll learn it from you?" 

"We could," Lio agrees, his tone still hard, "but I don't think either of us would be satisfied with our performance if it was based on my knowledge alone."

Galo sighs and says nothing. Lio is right, and Galo knows not even stubborn repetition will make him more adept. It only makes him feel useless, and makes Lio look like a fool for choosing him. 

"Hey." Lio peers up at him, interrupting Galo's thoughts, and finally he smiles again. "Listen, I'll answer any questions you have, Galo. I'll chase the rabbit with you if you want to share my experience. But I won't do only that. It won't help either of us, and it won't help humanity against the Kaiju."

Galo smiles too, and an idea strikes him as he remembers what Aina had said when they left the simulator. "You busy today?"

"Nothing I can't cancel."

Galo hesitates. "Wanna watch Detroit's old fights and tell me what you guys were doing?

"Sounds like a good place to start."

Lio cancels some plans with Lucia that he won't explain to Galo when they pick up a tablet from J-Tech and load it with Detroit's fight history, and a few of Southern Comfort's as well. He shakes his head when Galo starts to add Stalwart Chimera's tapes to their queue.

"You know Remy and Varys better than I do," he explains. "Watch those on your own, when you have a better idea of what's going on." 

They end up in Galo's room, sitting hunched over the tablet on his bed. Lio, either out of convenience or complete disregard for personal space, is sitting half in Galo's lap before they're even five minutes into the first video. This, of course, takes about three times as long as it should. Lio pauses and rewinds the recording frequently, and Galo finds himself watching Lio more than the video. 

He's animated as he recounts his earlier battles. "That!" He says pointedly, and rewinds to draw Galo's attention to what just happened. "Don't ever fucking do that." 

Galo watches Detroit Flare bend to meet the Kaiju head on, preparing to throw it over their shoulder in a titanic suplex. "Why not--?" His question is barely voiced before the beast emits some kind of pulse that propels them both forward, slamming Detroit into a building. Lio gapes in horror at his own past actions. Shattered glass from the office tower windows appears as glittering specks on the screen, raining down around the dueling monsters. Lio pauses the tape again.

"Thyma and I left that fight with a nasty concussion, even with the gyroscope,” Lio says distastefully. “ _ God _ , we were so green then. That was… what? Twenty-fourteen?" He shakes his head. "Look, that move works on  _ people _ . Not two hundred feet of alien with some kind of biological thrusters." He frowns at the screen, paused again on the carnage of their impact with glass and steel. "Try to imagine getting propelled into a building by a jet engine," he explains.

Galo winces. "Do not suplex the monsters, got it." He tries not to think that was exactly the move he'd tried in the simulator before he'd died for the sixth time before lunch. 

Galo has more to offer to this exercise than he had expected. He had gone over these tapes before, studying the fighting styles Lio and Thyma had preferred with Lucia when they were reoutfitting Detroit for battle. As Lio describes tactical decisions he and Thyma had made, Galo finds himself explaining how updates to the Jaeger were made with that in mind. A sword of thin but strong steel, made to be withdrawn from under her plated armor. The ridiculous unicorn horn, through which ran an electrical current so that it might be used either like a rhinoceros horn or removed and wielded like a branding club to burn through the tough hide of a Kaiju. 

By the fourth video, Galo is keeping pace with Lio's explanations, making his own commentary and analysis of the fight in tandem. Slowly, Galo becomes aware of Lio's pensive stare, that his partner has fallen silent. He interrupts himself, "What?"

"I just," Lio says slowly, "can't figure out how you've got a head full of all this and  _ still can't beat the sim _ ." 

His difficulty coalesces in this room into one bright, clear thought. "You aren't there."

"And I won't be," Lio replies, "until you can do it on your own." Galo opens his mouth to argue and finds he can't. Lio has twisted in his arms to silence him with a kiss, and if Galo has learned one thing over the last couple days it's that he wants to kiss Lio at any opportunity that presents itself. Disappointingly, the kiss doesn't last. Lio says, "We drift almost perfectly in sync. They know that. Now they need to know you can fight a Kaiju without me.  _ I  _ need to know you can fight a Kaiju without me." 

"Lio, that's…" He almost calls the statement ridiculous, almost says it will never happen. But then Galo remembers with sobering clarity that Lio had once fought titans alongside a girl named Thyma. A girl Galo had never met, and never would, but whom he could recall down to every curl of her hair, the timbre of her voice. He remembers, in the last moments of the fight with Scourge, that Lio had fought those moments alone. 

"I don't want to need to," he says instead. 

Lio lays his hand on Galo's cheek and kisses him again, soft and lingering. "I don't want you to have to. But I want to know you won't be dead in the water if something goes wrong," he whispers. 

Without the words to reply, Galo simply nods. Lio gazes back, eyes searching. He takes a breath to speak; Galo can see it, feel it. But he lets it out silently, forehead pressed to Galo's. Galo misses the Drift, where they wouldn't need words, wouldn't need language at all to communicate. It's still achingly new to him, this understanding of Lio that he has. It seems like something that shouldn't be. Galo has never been good with words, but he wasn't aware until he'd gone into the Drift that it was possible to be so thoroughly tongue tied, to at once know so much and so little. 

"I'm trying," is all Lio says before he turns back to the tablet Galo has long since forgotten and opens a new video. "Let's see if you're as good at picking apart Meis and Gueira's fights." 

\----

Galo doesn't go back to the simulator for a week. The occupants of the Shatterdome do not, as he had expected (or perhaps feared), collectively band together to force him back into training. Kray does not arrive to force him back into training. 

Galo feels, absurdly, like a child. In those days, he had been underfoot in the hangar, tugging at the shirtsleeves of J-Tech mechanics and more enamored by the giant robots than the people who piloted them. Now he finds himself listening eagerly to Gueira boast about Southern Comfort's kill count and relive the excitement. He picks apart Gueira's action sequences with Meis, picks Remi's brain for strategy more complicated than his own grin-and-bear-it approach. Varys, over the stretch of an afternoon, is a grueling taskmaster.

He takes Galo to the mats and dictates over the course of several matches the physiology of Kaiju. There are similarities across the spectrum: the thick hide, the double brain, the toxic blood. Things in the DNA that don't matter in a fight. Varys throws a right hook and Galo dodges and regurgitates what he's learned:

The places at the joints and the jaw, where even the toughest Kaiju hide has to soften to allow movement, are weaknesses. (He knocks the punch aside and throws one of his own; Varys weathers it not on the solar plexus where Galo aimed, but on his right shoulder and tugs Galo forward by the arm to throw him over his hip.)

Thin membranes could be torn, crippling Kaiju in the water or preventing flight, if they were capable of it. None yet had been, but that meant little in the face of an enemy like this. Very little could be predicted, except what could be gleaned from the energy signature fluctuations in the Breach. (Galo rolls quickly to his feet and has to duck just as quickly to avoid a roundhouse kick that should have caught him in the side. He leaps forward and tackles Varys about the middle.)

Assess their special abilities and neutralize them as quickly as possible. Acid spray, EMP, sonic pulses; find out where they come from and destroy it. 

"Isn't it better to leave them intact? I thought K-Sci studied that stuff?" He asks, the question heaving out of him on ragged breaths. He's struggling to keep Varys pinned down. It's an easier feat than keeping Lio down, but Varys has the size and musculature to match Galo.

"Sure, if you can kill it quickly," Varys answers. There's a moment where Varys gets an elbow into Galo's gut that the tables turn. Galo hurries to scramble out before he can be pinned down. He meets Varys head on as his opponent continues, just a little breathless himself, "But the longer the fight drags on, the more difference it makes to take those abilities out of the equation.

"The Jaegers are made to even the playing field in terms of size and strength. We can't match the biological weapons these things have evolved, so we have to prevent them from being used against us."

Galo only has the upper hand for a moment. Muscles shaking from extended exertion and his attention divided, Varys makes short work of pinning Galo down with an arm twisted, gently but firmly, behind his back. Galo slaps the mat, signaling defeat.

Varys offers a hand and pulls Galo to his feet. "Did we have to do that here?" Galo groans. "You could have just given me flashcards."

"You'd lose flashcards," Varys says with unjudging surety, "and you wouldn't use them." He grins and slaps Galo on the back. "We're the same on that. My instructors back in training used to go twelve rounds with me on the mats, drilling all that into my head until I didn't have to think to answer."

"I  _ still _ to go twelve rounds with you on the mats so you don't forget it," Remi says. He pushes off the wall with the shoulder he'd been leaning on. His face remains a practiced neutral, bordering on bored, but his tone tilts toward fondness. 

Varys laughs, deeply amused. "Well, you need the workout, string bean," he says affectionately, "and I need the reminding. Must be working, since we've got the best fight record of any active team." 

Remi smiles, a crack in his normally tempered and critical facade. He adjusts his glasses and the expression vanishes. "We're just lucky you have as much brain as you do brawn, you big lug," he sighs. 

It's a small revelation to Galo, when he thinks on it later. His lack of progress in the sim, Aina's admonition, and the days of tactical discussion he's just recently put himself through revolve around the point of needing to think on his feet. It won't all stick. He knows already he's forgotten some of the things Meis and Remi have told him. He remembers Lio's advice for it being from Lio, and Varys's for it having been recently beaten into him. The rest of it, he'll have to rely on Lio for or hope the Drift will dredge it up out of his subconscious.

He still thinks it's simpler than they make it out to be. The way Galo sees it, the Kaiju aren't making convoluted plans to wipe the human race out. They're just bigger, stronger, and infinitely weirder, and for whatever inexplicable reason they've decided to become conquerors. 

In the face of that, his job is straightforward: kill them first, with whatever weapons he has at his disposal. Detroit, and her guns and her blade. Streetlamps and utility poles, if necessary, as a particularly inventive maneuver by Southern Comfort taught him. (Lio had stared, open mouthed, at the fight he hadn't before seen, and exclaimed, "What the hell were they thinking?")

He's still thinking about it when he heads to bed hours later. A thought arrives in the dozy moments before sleep claims him that has Galo darting out of bed, wide awake. 

Lucia answers the pounding on her door with a call of, "What?" in a cranky drawl. She yanks the door open, still fully dressed and the lit computers behind her attesting that her mood isn't due to being roused from her rest. "Eh, Galo?"

"Help me model Detroit for the sim."


End file.
